DSP member, Lauraloub, caught my attention with her delightful layouts for a story told to include her granddaughters. Assisted by DSP member, iwuvpsp who helped with the story and illustrations, Laura Lou created a gift they will cherish all their lives, but she put them together using inexpensive paper bags. Yep, paper bags.

One of my firm beliefs embraces the fact that you do NOT need to spend a ton of money to preserve memories and share delight. Yes, when the budget allows for extras, that's always fun, but the core of scrapbooking boils down to the memories and moments - and in this case, a delightful flight of fancy.

Thank you SO much, Laura Lou for sharing your directions and photos to help all of us create these little works of wonder! If you create an album, we'd love to see it in the Hybrid Scrapbooking Gallery!

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Hybrid Lunch Bag Album
By Laura Lou Bashlor

1. Start with 3 (or 4) paper lunch bags either brown or white.
2. Alternate them as you stack them open right, open left, open right again

3. Fold each in half.

4. Slide them together to make a book













5. Punch holes along the fold. I used a comb-binding machine. If you punch each bag separately you CAN use a hand punch but be sure to line up the holes as you punch through the layers.

Here is one done with a regular hold punch.

6. Tie various ribbons, yarns, and fibers through the holes.

7. Cover pages with printed background papers, matted photos and digital layouts. If you have a stash of “real” embellishments add them along with those printed from digital kits.

8. For this book I alternated between the illustrations (layouts done with Photoshop CS2) and printer text (also done with Photoshop CS2).

9. What about the bag openings? Well those are for tags, extra notes, extra photos, whatever you want to tuck in there.

10. Here is MY finished album/book. I can’t wait to see what shows up in the hybrid gallery next!!!